A
native of Chicago, Moore initially broke into showbusiness as a trapeze
artist, then moved into modeling after an injury cut his circus career
short. He appeared in a string of movie serials, including "The Ghost
of Zorro," served three years in the Army Air Force during World War II
and then returned to Hollywood for more movies.

Moore
beat about 75 other actors vying to portray the Lone Ranger. His casting
came with a caveat. The public had grown so used to hearing Earle Graser
and later Brace Beemer as the voice of the masked man; Moore was ordered
to copy their deeper voices.

"It
seemed ridiculous to me at the time, but it eventually worked," Moore
once said. "I developed the same depth of tone they had, and eventually
it carried over into my speaking voice."

Moore's
portrayal of the Lone Ranger, with the notion of a good guy hiding behind
a mask and never shooting to kill, proved immensely popular.

But
that mask allowed producers to switch actors after a dispute with Moore.

"In
1952, I had a little contractual problem with the corporation that owned
the Lone Ranger," Moore once said. "I just wanted a little star on my
dressing room door. Just a little one. We couldn't come to an agreement.
So, they got a gentlemen by the name of John Hart to play the part. Well,
John tried. He's a wonderful gentlemen and I'm not putting him down at
all. But I just don't think he took the character to heart as much as
I did."

For
Hart, the role was just another job.

"It
was a good job," says Hart. "I worked for a while. When you're an actor,
to have any kind of steady income, it's a miracle."

Each
episode of The Lone Ranger, Hart recalls, was made in a hurry.

"We
were supposed to make one every two days, which was a lot for scripts
in those days," he says. "There were 30-some pages of dialogue. & I'd
get up about 5 in the morning and start memorizing lines."

In
the beginning, the budget for each episode was $12,500, a figure that
was bumped to $18,000 by 1954.

"I
thought it was great and it was a steady job but it was cheap, the cheapest
damn job I ever had," Hart says. "But I liked working and I liked acting.
I liked the weekly check; even if it wasn't so hot, it was good to have.
I was paid a little over Guild minimum, which wasn't very much."

Hart
says he wasn't told why Moore left the series, or why Moore returned.
Hart went on to make the short-lived 1957 TV series Hawkeye and the Last
of the Mohicans, with Lon Chaney Jr., where the shooting schedule was
over a more relaxed four days.

While
Hart may not have taken the Lone Ranger to heart as Moore did, he said
he "took it for granted" not to get into any trouble during his tenure
behind the mask.

"I
wasn't going to go out and fight and be a drunken bum or anything. Because
I knew that a lot of people thought highly of the Lone Ranger. That was
part of the job. I was always nice and polite to people. I still am. I
still get a lot of mail wanting the Lone Ranger's autograph. I do that."

Hart
stepped into the role of the Lone Ranger twice more, in the early 1980s,
for guest appearances on Happy Days and Greatest American Hero. Those
parts initially were offered to Moore. "I turned them both down," Moore
wrote in his autobiography. "I will only portray the Lone Ranger in a
show or film about the Lone Ranger. Anything else, I'm not interested."

Moore
did reunite with Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto alongside him on the
Lone Ranger series, for a 1960s TV ad for Jeno's Pizza Rolls. "I have
always been careful not to mock the character of the Lone Ranger or demean
the image in any way," Moore wrote in his autobiography. "So if Jay and
I decided that the commercials were funny and entertaining, and didn't
make the Ranger and Tonto look silly, we'd agree. Jeno's Pizza were the
most popular ads. Usually Jay and I just walked on at the end to deliver
the punch line."

Silverheels
died in 1980 at age 62.

Moore
also appeared in costume advertising other products, including Silver
gasoline for Amoco and Aqua Velva aftershave, and continued to make a
string of personal appearances.

TROUBLE
BREWING

"I
welcome all of you with my traditional greeting of "Tai, kemo sabe,'"
Moore would say, explaining that the greeting translates to "Hello, faithful
friend." At these appearances, Moore would offer warm thoughts about Silverheels,
answer questions, twirl his guns and repeat his famous cry: "Hi-yo, Silver!
Away!"

With
each appearance, Moore paid a fee to the Wrather Corp., which paid $3
million for ownership of the Lone Ranger in 1954. Moore also kept himself
in good physical shape, "always ready to step before the cameras again"
should the Lone Ranger be resurrected for a new TV series or movie.

But
Wrather wasn't thinking about using Moore again. Starting in 1975, the
corporation began telling Moore he was to old to portray the Lone Ranger
and ordered him to stop billing himself as the character.

Moore
ignored Wrather's request and the subsequent "regular legal threats,"
although he did start billing himself as "Clayton Moore, the man who played
the Lone Ranger."

Not
making public appearances would have hurt Moore, he explained in his autobiography.
"It was the way I made my living. More than that, it was the way I lived
my life."

The
battle between Wrather and Moore finally went to court in 1979. The company
asked for an injunction against Moore portraying the Lone Ranger. Los
Angeles Superior Court Judge Vernon Foster agreed with attorneys for Wrather.

"It's
our mask," one lawyer told the court. "By wearing the mask, Moore is appearing
as the Lone Ranger. But in spite of what Mr. Moore feels in his heart,
he is not the Lone Ranger. We own the Lone Ranger."

The
court stripped Moore of his mask, sparking a huge outcry among his fans;
they eventually would collect more than a million signatures demanding
that Moore again be allowed to wear the mask.

One
fan wrote to the Los Angeles Times: "The names of Clayton Moore and the
Lone Ranger have been synonymous for most of my life. To ask Clayton Moore
to turn in his mask is like asking all the moms in America to quit baking
apple pie."

A
FAILED MOVIE

But
Wrather wanted another man behind the mask. The company was planning a
new, big-screen treatment of the Lone Ranger. Called The Legend of the
Lone Ranger, the movie starred an unknown, Klinton Spilsbury, and told
the origins of the character.

Moore
took to wearing large black sunglasses instead of his familiar mask.

If
anything, the legal battle merely sparked more interest in Moore. In 1980,
he traveled more than 1 million miles, visiting fans, spinning his guns
and speaking out against the lawsuit.

During
a stop in Pensacola, Florida, that year, Moore spotted a young boy wearing
a souvenir Lone Ranger mask. "I wouldn't take the mask off you, young
man," he told the boy. "Yet they took the mask off my face."

The
new movie The Legend of the Lone Ranger, released in 1981, was an absolute
bomb and lost $11 million. Fans stayed away. The script drastically altered
parts of the Lone Ranger legend; for example, the Lone Ranger used silver
for his bullets because he couldn't shoot straight with ordinary lead
bullets. (In the original telling, the Lone Ranger used silver bullets
as a reminder that life is precious.)

Moore
skipped seeing the movie. In addition to the bitterness over the lawsuit,
Moore was upset that the new movie was rated PG and not suitable for everyone.

"There's
a PG rating on the picture," he said. "That's shocking to me. A Lone Ranger
picture is supposed to have a G rating so mom and dad can take their 5-year-old
to see someone fighting for what is right."

The
movie masked man, portrayed by Klinton Spilsbury, who hasn't made a picture
since, didn't endear himself to Lone Ranger fans when he mocked the role.
Asked to wear the Lone Ranger costume in public by the movie's producers,
Spilsbury refused. "In all my fantasies about acting, I never saw myself
going around looking like a raccoon," he said.

A DIFFERENT IDEA

John
Hart, Moore's replacement on the show, appeared in The Legend of the
Lone Ranger, but Moore wasn't offered any part.

Moore
later saw the movie when it aired on television and proclaimed that he
"was not happy with it."

Moore
had his own vision for a movie about the Lone Ranger, he told a Los Angeles
Times reporter in 1981, one that opened with his faithful Indian sidekick
dead.

"Tonto
dies, and I find a young man who is on the fence between going bad and
standing for what is right and just," Moore explained. "There's a lot
of good in him but it needs to be developed. I take him under my wing
and we fight the forces of evil together. At the end of the film, after
he's proven himself, I give him my silver bullets and, with my back to
the camera, I take off the mask and hand it to him. I advise him to find
a faithful companion to help him in his work and tell him the task of
seeking justice is now his."

Moore
would then ride off into the sunset to the familiar strains of the William
Tell Overture.

Moore
never realized his version. But his own story did have a happy ending.
Wrather in 1984 allowed Moore to once again wear the mask of the Lone
Ranger.

A little more than a year before Moore died, Sen. Max Cleland entered
his praise for Moore into the Congressional Record. Cleland noted that
"Clayton has served as a wonderful and positive example to us all" and
thanked him "for teaching us that the good guys do win."

As
Moore wrote in his autobiography: "I would like to have the Lone Ranger
remembered as a great American, who was a friend to all. That he stood
up for everyone, and that he epitomized everything that is great about
America. And I would like Clayton Moore to be remembered in the same way.
Until that day I am taken to that big ranch in the sky I will try to live
up to the standards of honesty, decency, respect, patriotism that have
defined the Lone Ranger since 1933."